Crucifix and figures by Peter Eugene Ball (Birmingham Cathedral) 
Stone carving at Ruskin Mill (probably by Greg Tricker) 
Prophet - Ernst Blensdorf (Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral)
This year our summer holiday, which took in Greenbelt, was spent in Birmingham, Uley and Liverpool with family and friends. There was also the opportunity to see a great variety of works of art wherever we went.
I was fortunate that our time in Birmingham coincided with the Body & Soul exhibition by Juginder Lamba at the Waterhall Gallery of Modern Art. I posted on this exhibition at the time and have subsequently reviewed it for the Church Times. I also visited Birmingham Cathedral and enjoyed the pieces by Nicholas Mynheer and Peter Eugene Ball which were sensitively and effectively hung in side chapels.
From Birmingham, we went to Uley where we stayed for the Greenbelt Festival. My posts about Greenbelt and the visual art there can be found here, here, here and here. While in Uley I also looked for examples of work by Greg Tricker, eventually finding a stone carving of an angel at Ruskin Mill that I think was his and buying a copy of his book on St Francis of Assisi.
Finally, we went to Liverpool where a friend took us to both Cathedrals and to the Lady Level Art Gallery at Port Sunlight. While the architecture and interiors of both Cathedral's were generally impressive (the Metropolitan more so than the Anglican), the art in both, although appropriately placed and hung, failed to excite. At the Anglican Cathedral it was good to see funding actively being sought for contemporary art, yet the pieces purchased seemed run-of-mill examples from the artists selected which failed to add considerably to our appreciation of the parables and stories that served as subjects.
The exceptions were all sculptures; the Risen Christ by Elizabeth Frink at the Anglican Cathedral and the Jacob Epstein and Ernst Blensdorf works at the Metropolitan Cathedral. I was particularly interested to see the Blensdorf's having seen a retrospective exhibition of his work some year's ago at St John's Glastonbury which houses two monumental works by Blensdorf; Resurrection Christ and Madonna with Child. Also of interest was the sculpture in Hope Street by Stephen Broadbent of David Sheppard and Derek Worlock.
The Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight was founded by William Hesketh Lever and is dedicated to the memory of his wife Elizabeth. The gallery contains the best of his personal art collection and a wonderful collection it is too, containing a large number of major Pre-Raphaelite works in particular. The best of these are Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat and May Morning on Magdalen Tower.
Lever said, at the opening of the Gallery in December 1922:
"Art has always been to me a stimulating influence; it has always taught me without upbraiding me; elevated me without humbling me; and appealed to me because of the fact that only the best and truest in art survives... Art can be to everyone an inspiration. It is within the reach of all of us..."
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Larry Norman - Be Careful What You Sign.
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